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VIDEO: Immigration, H-1B Policies Don't Make Sense, Says SAS CEO

When Jim Goodnight, CEO of business intelligence company, SAS, studied the April unemployment numbers, things just didn't add up. It wasn't the actual job numbers that were the problem, but rather how they relate to the number of people allowed to work in the U.S. under H-1B visas each year and the number of people who come into the U.S. from its Southern borders.

"Of the population here in the U.S. that has a college degree or better, the unemployment rate is 2.2 percent. At the PhD level it is virtually zero," he says. Yet people with advanced degress are the ones who are restricted by H-1B caps, he says.

"On the flipside, for high-school dropouts the unemployment rate is 7%, but yet that's the population that we are allowing to come across our Southern borders to take the jobs away from some of the poorest workers in America."

Goodnight's comments come at a time when immigration policies are top of mind. Those in favor of more lenient H-1B policies will applaud him. Those in favor of more lenient Southern border immigration policies will boo him. Where do you stand?

I caught up with Goodnight when he was in Washington last week for a meeting with the Business Roundtable. You can download the video to hear more of his views on foreign workers, education, analytics and even multicore processing or just click the play button below.

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